2008 Smart Card Confab Shines Spotlight On U.S. Market

PARIS — Organizers of the annual Cartes Congress (now the Cartes & IDentification Congress) plan a number of innovations for the 2008 show, which is scheduled for November 4 through 6 at the Paris-NordVillepinteExhibitionCenter here. The event will focus on e-transactions and ID management, and will focus on the dynamic United States market. Japan was the nation of honor last year.

In 2007, the Congress inaugurated a co-located show, IDentification, to give visitors the benefit of the synergy between the two overlapping industries. This was a great success, the organizers report, and it will return this year. The 2008 event is expected to draw more than 20,000 visitors, 520 exhibiting companies and 1,700 conference delegates.

Prompting designation of the U.S. as 2008 nation of honor is the observation by the event’s sponsors that this country “has been a genuine pioneer in terms of transport, payment, exchanges and loyalty applications.” Moreover, they added, “Compared to the rise of contactless technology in Europe, the United States appear to be very much ahead when it comes to its deployment via multiple applications such as electronic documents or payment cards. The secure electronic transactions market represents a strategic area, one where the U.S. is actively involved and is consequently tending to impose a number of new technological standards.”

This year’s parallel IDentification trade show will display the state of the art in biometrics, documents securing, authentication, physical and logical access control, encryption and RF identification.

The opening session will be a World Card Summit, at which a panel of industry leaders will offer their perspectives on industry developments. Showgoers also will be able to avail themselves of the Mobile Transaction TechZone, another program inaugurated last year to widespread applause. It offers a detailed overview of the latest products and services in the areas of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, transaction security, kiosk technology, and a variety of RFID implementations. It’s organized in partnership with the Near-Field Communications Forum, and NFC applications will be prominent among the exhibits (NFC is a popular cashless payment system based on an RFID device typically built into a mobile telephone handset.)

Another highlight of the Cartes & IDentification Congress will be the presentation of the coveted Sesame Awards, which are open to all companies in the sectors studied, whether or not they exhibit. Winners in 10 categories are selected by a jury of experts, and are honored at a gala event on the evening before the show opens.

The Congress is administered by Comexposium (Paris), a new trade show management organization formed by the alliance of Exposium and Comexpo; official partner is Eurosmart (Brussels, Belgium), an international association representing the smart security industry.

Information on attending or exhibiting at the show, and online registration, may be found at www.cartes.com.